This blog is available to keep students, faculty, staff and all patrons of Coastal Carolina University's Kimbel Library updated on news and information about Kimbel Library. Postings will include information about library hours, services, new resources and more.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Don’t be mislead by the name – Web of “Science” covers the social sciences AND arts and humanities. In fact, it covers 1,160 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals - twice the number of humanities journals in Project Muse and JSTOR combined.

WOS is a powerful tool to track humanities (or any) research, and now has the extremely cool Citation Map. The Map gives a great visual image of “before and after” citations for any article, like this article on funeral rites in Hamlet:

It’s easy to see the gazillions (actually, 108) articles the author cited in this article, and the 7 articles that cited this article. You can hover over each colored block to get citation info for each article.

Need to see who is researching or referencing a particular work of art, piece of music, author or literary work? WOS lets you dig a little deeper than a general keyword search by using the “Cited Reference Search” tab. This will give you articles that include, say, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Grant Woods’ American Gothic in their references. BTW, J.K Rowling is cited a lot, even in articles that have nothing to do with Harry Potter.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

If you use a lot of the library's databases from EBSCO, you may have noticed that there have been a number of error messages lately. This is a problem that we are working with EBSCO to resolve. For now, if you are on campus, search EBSCO databases through the "on campus only" link, and you should not experience any error screens. We're hoping that error-free off-campus access will soon be restored.

If you need help with your taxes, VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) will provide free tax help from February 16th through March 31st, 2009 in Wall 201. For more information, see this Coastal News Release: http://www.coastal.edu/news/story.php?id=2207.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Did you know that Kimbel Library has a group on Facebook? If you use Facebook, you can join the Kimbel Library group to get updates on library news and events. It is also a great way to have library hours and other information easily accessible to you all in one place. Just type "Kimbel Library" in the search box and you should find the group!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Did you know that many of Kimbel Library's online databases provide help with citation styles right from your search screen? As soon as you find an article you want to cite in your paper, you can email or copy the correct citation for your works cited list. Here's how it works in Academic Search Premier:

1) Do a search and choose an article you like.2) Click the title and look at the full record for the article.3) Click the symbol that looks like a gold piece of paper4) You'll see a screen like this with popular citation styles listed. Just choose which one you need for your class (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). Easy!

You will find this option in many library databases, so if you look for the option, you will be able to save time on your works cited pages.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

A revised edition of the library's help guide for citing business sources in APA style is now available online at http://www.coastal.edu/library/citing/businessapa.pdf (it is a pdf file, so you'll need Adobe Reader on your computer to view it). This page includes APA citation examples for many of the library's popular business databases, as well examples for annual reports and popular business websites.